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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29421066">Three (or Four) Shades of Blues</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AverageContentProducer/pseuds/AverageContentProducer'>AverageContentProducer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cowboy Bebop (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ed does a gender, Gen, I am actually a firm believer that he died but I wrote this anyways?, I reccomend that everyone become a bartender for at least a short period in their lives, It is simply not done, Men do not talk about their feelings, Post-Canon, Quite the musical selection!, Spike lives, What gender? Who knows man. Who knows., With apologies to Charles Mingus, and Fastball, and Kate Bush</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:34:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,321</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29421066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AverageContentProducer/pseuds/AverageContentProducer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike Spiegel has been dead for five long years. So, Jet can be forgiven for not jumping for joy when his old partner strolls into his bar long after last call, takes a seat, and orders a drink.</p><p>OR: The gang doesn't quite get back together, but they don't become strangers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Three (or Four) Shades of Blues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Spike leaves. </p><p>Spike dies. </p><p>Jet always knew this would happen, has been dreading this moment since he first let Spike on board, and now it has finally come to pass. Spike had looked Jet in the eyes, plainly stated that he intended to leave and not come back, and what had Jet done? He'd stepped aside. Watched him go. Let him die. </p><p>Just like that.</p><p>Maybe, if Jet had done more, he could have convinced Spike to stay. Maybe if he had said "turn back" louder, more forcefully. Maybe if he'd repeated himself. Maybe if he had said "please."</p><p>But he didn't, because it wouldn't have mattered. There was no stopping Spike, he knew that. Spike was already dead when Jet first met him years ago, had long since passed the event horizon. Turning back was never an option.</p><p>Still. <em>Still</em>. He wishes he had done more.</p><p>Jet is so consumed with drowning in remorse that he only remembers that Faye was even still on board the Bebop when he sees her ship pull out of the garage and fly away. She's heading in the opposite direction that Spike's ship had gone. Jet knows that she won't be returning to the Bebop, either.</p><p>That's just fine. He couldn't stop Spike, and he certainly can't stop her. Really, that's just perfect.</p><p>When he turns away from the window, Jet finds the Bebop empty. Truly, honest-to-God, <em>empty</em>. Empty in a way that it has never been before. Suddenly, before his very eyes, his ship, his pride and joy, has transformed into a ghost town. He can't imagine anyone walking through the Bebop's corridors ever again. </p><p>Not anyone that matters, anyways.</p><p>Standing in the empty foyer, Jet announces to nobody: "I think I'm done with all this."</p><p>So, he sells it.</p><p>It takes a month to find a single buyer, and their offer is far, far below the actual value of the ship. He closes on the deal immediately. It doesn't matter how much Jet makes off the sale. He wants this all behind him. He wants this all in the past.</p><p>And, oh, he puts it in the past, alright. The problem is, it doesn't stay there.</p><hr/><p>He's been ducking out on Mars. Got a few buddies down there. One of these buddies comes through with something: a mutual friend from their ISSP days owns a bar, technically. Its a family hand-me-down, a real hole, located on the edge of New Salado. Well, the guy owns it, but he had no intentions of ever actually running it: he only ever kept a single bartender employed, let the man do whatever he wanted so long as he kept the business in the black. This set up had worked out for 15 years, right up until the bartender suffered a massive stroke.</p><p>If Jet's willing to go down there, open the bar up and close it back down again, for at least 4 days a week... Well, that's an entire lifestyle right there. You can live a long time off of that. At least 15 years, apparently. Jet supposes he has 15 more years left in him.</p><p>So, he takes the job.</p><p>The job is exactly as advertised: he opens the bar up. He serves alcohol to people at the bar. When he deems the day complete, he shuts the bar back down again. He only does this routine on days when he feels like doing so. New Salado is mainly a tourist town, so people come, and people go. There's a few regular customers, but they occasionally drift away as well, no explanation given, never to be seen again. It doesn't bother Jet. He's used to it.</p><p>Jet finds bartending to be completely unfulfilling, often demeaning, and a waste of his talents. However, it pays the bills, and it can be... entertaining. Its similar to bounty hunting, in that way. So he keeps doing it.</p><p>He's been doing it for 14 months when Faye Valentine walks into the bar.</p><hr/><p>Jet doesn't actually see her come in, he's otherwise occupied talking to one of his regulars. She doesn't care at all, bulldozes their conversation by declaring to the room, "Wow. This place is a real dump."</p><p>She dresses differently now, more modestly, and her hair's longer, but despite all that, she's the same old Faye. Jet scoffs, greets her in kind. "You didn't expect to find me in one of those bars where they wear bow-ties and wax their mustaches, now did you?"</p><p>"Oh, I'd pay to see <em>that</em>." She's standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, still surveying the place. "Seriously, the only color in here that's not gray is rust! I'm impressed, you've truly outdone yourself." She's insulting him, as usual, but her tone is strangely fond. "Almost makes the place feel like home." </p><hr/><p>Faye comes and goes, just like she always has. Sometimes, she orders a single drink, stops for a quick chat, and is on her way. Sometimes, she's still there at the end of the night, blackout drunk, weepy and belligerent. Thankfully, the former is much more common than the latter, but there's no way to predict which Faye will walk through the door. You just never know with that woman.</p><p>Jet is happy, more or less, to have her around, in spite of the chaos she tends to bring. Its a bit nostalgic. He secretly agrees with her, about the bar feeling like home. Well, almost like home.</p><p>There's a couple things missing.</p><hr/><p>One January afternoon, while he's dragging the empty kegs out back to the storage rack, Jet sees something ominous.</p><p>Huddled under the rack, covered in snow, is a cat. Its freezing outside, it being the middle of an especially harsh winter. It took a moment for Jet to even identify the creature for what it was; the cat is so still, it doesn't even seem to be breathing. The poor thing must have frozen to death. </p><p>He considers disposing of it, or something, when the sound of a dog barking behind him makes the cat suddenly spring up, not dead at all, and flee. Its was only for a split second, but without the snow blanketing it, Jet could see that it was a tabby cat. He does not, under any circumstances, refer to the tabby cat as a tiger striped cat.</p><p>It doesn't mean anything. Its just a damn cat.</p><p>Then, a random stranger, running full speed down the alley, apparently chasing after something, slams right into him.</p><p>"Oops sorry good to see you bye bye!"</p><p>It all happens so quickly, Jet doesn't even get a chance to say anything. He's left standing in the empty street, wondering if that really just happened.</p><hr/><p>"I think I saw Edward the other day", he tells Faye as he pours her a Jack and coke.</p><p>"Yeah?" She doesn't sound surprised at all. "The kid's gotten pretty tall, hasn't he."</p><p>Sounds like Faye's seen Ed around too, then. "He?" Jet raises an eyebrow. "Did I miss something?"</p><p>"You're such an old man, Jet." Faye rolls her eyes at him as she downs a good portion of her drink in one go. "How about you try asking him that next time you run into him?"</p><p>Well, maybe Jet will, thank you very much. "For the record, Ed's the one who ran into <em>me</em>."</p><hr/><p>While their visits are mostly pleasant, the day eventually comes where Faye says something that Jet refuses to hear.</p><p>"You know," she informs him, dragging a finger around the rim of a dirty martini she's been nursing for an hour, "they never found his body."</p><p>"Who cares", Jet snaps. Unlike certain people, Jet's not interested in living in the past, and he's sure as hell not interested in trying to hunt down a ghost.</p><p>Faye fixes him a capital-L Look, as though he's offended her. "<em>You</em> care, Jet."</p><p>He keeps working on prepping lemon slices, doesn't even look up at her when he mutters, "I couldn't give a rat's ass about that bastard."</p><p>Faye nearly jumps out of her chair, knocking her almost empty glass to the floor, where it shatters. "I don't come here to be <em>lied to</em>, Jet." Then why does she come here at all? When Jet doesn't respond, she grabs her things, spits out "Fine! You just keep running, then." The door slams shut behind her on her way out. </p><p>Women are such hypocrites. </p><p>Jet doesn't see Faye again for 6 months. When she does finally come back, they both act like it never happened, although Jet does have half a mind to bill her for the tab she walked out on. They wordlessly agree not to talk about Spike again.</p><p>Jet does thinks about what Faye said, though. He thinks about it more than he should. He wasn't surprised to hear that they never found him, that he might still be out there. He wasn't happy about the news, either. It would have been better, maybe, if they <em>had</em> found a body. Then Jet would finally have proof, he could close the book, let the dream die. Instead, now he has a reason to hope, and he's much too old to be doing that. Its not good for him.</p><p>The awful truth is, he's kept hope alive this entire time. Sometimes, when he's taking a smoke break out back, he thinks he can see Spike's shadow in the distance, wandering off somewhere. He tries to imagine where Spike might be now, what would he be doing, would he finally be happy? He has no clue where he could possibly be, but he can easily imagine Spike dancing on his own grave, can see it so clearly it hurts. It just seems right.</p><p>But that's all wrong. Spike died. More importantly, Spike <em>left</em>. It doesn't really matter if he survived or not, because Jet is never going to see him again.</p><hr/><p>And then, of course, it happens.</p><p>Its a Monday, the slowest day of the week, in the middle of April. Easter was yesterday, but, well, he always <em>did</em> like to arrive fashionably late.</p><p>Jet's wiping down the glassware, the bar is completely empty, and he's going to lock up in about five minutes. He can feel the atmosphere shift the second the door swings open. He doesn't need to turn and look at who it is. He already knows. Sure, he moves slower than he used to. Sure, he steps with a limp now.</p><p>Its still, unmistakably, Spike.</p><p>Jet takes a deep breath, counts to ten, convinces himself not to immediately smash a bottle into Spike's stupid, arrogant, <em>very not dead</em>, face. A part of him wants to throttle the other man. Another part wants to loudly renounce his previous lack of belief in God. Yet another part reminds him that the smartest thing to do here is nothing: the only way to deal with Spike is to let him make the first move. If you rush headlong into a conversation with him he'll just turn the entire thing on its head, leave you with even more questions than before. Its exactly the same as how he fights. Jet's watched enough fools take a swing at Spike, only to end up flat on their backs and no idea what just happened. He won't make the same mistake.</p><p>So Jet does nothing at all, just stands there, silent. Spike does the only thing Spike is capable of doing: he waltzes right on in. Jet briefly imagines Spike strolling into the syndicate headquarters, into certain death, exactly the same way he's walking into his bar. Like its nothing. That'd be just like him, wouldn't it?</p><p>Spike slides into the closest stool at the bar, tilts his chin upwards, and calls, "I'll take a whiskey, neat." When Jet hesitates, he changes his order to "Actually? Make it two."</p><p>Jet mechanically pours out two individual glasses, sets them down in the endless space between the two of them. And then something very strange happens. Stranger than Spike coming back from the dead.</p><p>Spike takes his glass of whiskey and sips it. He doesn't throw the whole thing back, the way he always used to. He <em>sips</em> it.</p><p>Jet can't believe what he is seeing. Spike looks exactly the way Jet remembers, he's even wearing the same outfit. But something is clearly different about him. He doesn't know how to describe it.</p><p>A long silence stretches out between them. So, that's how its going to be. The ball is in Jet's court, now.</p><p>He can't stop himself from asking The Question, the obvious one. The question he's been asking no one for five entire years. He returns to closing down the bar as he asks it, preoccupies himself with wiping down the liquor bottles and cleaning off the counter tops.</p><p>"Back then, before you left, you said you were going to find out if you were alive or not." Jet speaks slowly, deliberately. He doesn't want to leave any room for misinterpretation, here. "You get your answer, Spike?"</p><p>For the first time in a very long time, they make eye contact. Jet watches a grin, a real one, spread across Spike's face, so wide that it actually reaches his eyes. It occurs to Jet that he has never seen Spike smile like that before.</p><p>"You know what?" Spike sounds relieved. "I did." He takes another sip from his glass and then continues. "Turns out, I was alive the whole damn time."  </p><p>Jet shakes his head. What an answer. He sets his work aside, picks up his own glass of whiskey, partakes in it. He asks another question, although this time all of the animosity is gone. Jet's smiling now, too. In fact, he's practically laughing when he asks, "What the hell are you doing here, Spike?"</p><p>"Oh, you know me," Spike says, clinking their glasses together. "I never could leave the past behind."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Slightly unrelated, but I've been thinking lately about how King of the Mountain by Kate Bush and The Way by Fastball are two very different sounding and yet thematically identical songs: we know that Elvis is dead, we know that <a href="https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/the-way-how-a-salado-couples-tragic-story-inspired-a-chart-topping-song/269-459113059">Lela and Raymond Howard</a> are dead. But what if they weren't? What if they were still out there, somewhere, laughing it up? </p><p>Wouldn't that be nice?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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